Russia is willing to consider granting political asylum for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who blew the lid on the US PRISM program, Russian media reported. Snowden dropped out of sight Monday after he was last seen checking out of a Hong Kong hotel.

“If we receive such a request, we will consider it,”
Kommersant daily quoted President Vladimir Putin's press
secretary Dmitry Peskov as saying.

Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and
current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton,
revealed the existence of PRISM, the National Security Agency’s
(NSA) massive data-mining surveillance program which gave the
agency backdoor access to emails, videos, chats, photos and
search queries from nine worldwide tech giants.

The whistleblower disappeared after checking out of a Hong Kong
hotel, Reuters quoted witnesses as saying. A day earlier Snowden
revealed his identity to The Guardian newspaper.

The revelations of Edward Snowden have been condemned by senior
US lawmakers, who threatened the whistleblower with prosecution.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on Monday called Snowden’s NSA
leaks an “act of treason.”

Chairman of the House homeland security subcommittee Peter King
stressed that if Edward Snowden is the leaker, then the US
“must prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and begin
extradition proceedings at the earliest date."

On Monday, Regina Ip, formerly Hong Kong’s top official
overseeing security, told reporters it would be in Snowden’s
“best interest to leave Hong Kong,” citing an extradition
treaty with the United States that was signed in 1996.

“He won’t find Hong Kong a safe harbor,” Ip said.
“Those agreements have been in force for more than 10 years.
If the US submits a request, we would act in accordance with the
law.”

Snowden fled to Hong Kong on May 20. Before that he had been
working with the NSA earning approximately $200,000 per year and
living in Hawaii.

“I’m willing to sacrifice all that because I can’t in good
conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet
freedom and basic liberties for people all around the world with
this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,”
he told The Guardian. “The greatest fear that I have regarding
the outcome for America, of these disclosures, is that nothing
will change.”

Snowden copied the last of the documents he planned to release
three weeks ago, telling his bosses he needed time off to be
treated for epilepsy. He has also said he has a girlfriend who
was unaware of his plans to seek refuge in Hong Kong.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he has been in contact with Edward Snowden, saying the NSA
contractor was a prime example of what his organization is
attempting to do.

“This organization and people like it and our values are
forming a new body politic and people like Edward Snowden are
part of that phenomena,” Assange said in a telephone
interview with The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Emma
Alberici on Monday from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed classified US
surveillance programs leaked by Snowden, told AP that there will
be more ‘significant information’ exposed in
the near future. "We are going to have a lot more significant
revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several
weeks and months," Greenwald told AP.